Lolly Willowes

by Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Henry and Caroline glanced at each other in horror. Mr. Arbuthnot said: “How very interesting! But I really don’t think I am likely to do such a thing.” Laura made no answer. She did not think so either. But she was amusing herself with a surprisingly vivid and terrible picture of Mr. Arbuthnot cloaked in a shaggy hide and going with heavy devouring swiftness upon all-fours with a lamb dangling from his mouth.

  This settled it. Henry and Caroline made no more attempts to marry off Laura. Trying to do so had been a nuisance and an expense, and Laura had never shown the smallest appreciation of their trouble. Before long they would have the girls to think of. Fancy was sixteen, and Marion nearly as tall as Fancy. In two years they would have to begin again. They were glad of a respite, and made the most of it. Laura also was glad of a respite. She bought second-hand copies of Herodotus and Johnson’s Dictionary to read in the evenings. Caroline, still sewing on buttons, would look at her sister-in-law’s composed profile. Laura’s hair was black as ever, but it was not so thick. She had grown paler from living in London. Her forehead had not a wrinkle, but two downward lines prolonged the drooping corners of her mouth. Her face was beginning to stiffen. It had lost its power of expressiveness, and was more and more dominated by the hook nose and the sharp chin. When Laura was ten years older she would be nut-crackerish.

  Caroline resigned herself to spending the rest of her evenings with Laura beside her. The perpetual company of a sister-in-law was rather more than she had bargained for. Still, there she was, and Henry was right—they had been the proper people to make a home for Laura when her father died, and she was too old now to begin living by herself. It was not as if she had had any experience of life; she had passed from one guardianship to another: it was impossible to imagine Laura fending for herself. A kind of pity for the unused virgin beside her spread through Caroline’s thoughts. She did not attach an inordinate value to her wifehood and maternity; they were her duties, rather than her glories. But for all that she felt emotionally plumper than Laura. It was well to be loved, to be necessary to other people. But Laura too was loved, and Laura was necessary. Caroline did not know what the children would do without their Aunt Lolly.

  Every one spoke of her as Aunt Lolly, till in the course of time she had almost forgotten her baptismal name.

  “Say How-do to Auntie Laura,” said Caroline to Fancy. This was long ago in the refurbished nursery at Lady Place when Laura knelt timidly before her first niece, while the London nurse bustled round them unpacking soft hair-brushes and pots of cold cream, and hanging linen to air upon the tall nursery fender.

  “How-do, Auntie Lolly,” said Fancy, graciously thrusting forward a fur monkey.

  “She’s taken to you at once, Laura,” said Caroline. “I was afraid this journey would upset her, but she’s borne it better than any of us.”

  “Journeys are nothing to them at that age, ma’am,” said the nurse. “Now suppose you tell your new auntie what you call Monkey.”

  “Auntie Lolly, Auntie Lolly,” repeated Fancy, rhythmically banging the monkey against the table-leg.

  The name hit upon by Fancy was accepted by Marion and Titus; before long their parents made use of it also. Everard never spoke of his daughter but as Laura, even when he spoke of her to his grandchildren. He was too old to change his ways, and he had, in any case, a prejudice against nicknames and abbreviations. But when Laura went to London she left Laura behind, and entered into a state of Aunt Lolly. She had quitted so much of herself in quitting Somerset that it seemed natural to relinquish her name also. Divested of her easily-worn honors as mistress of the household, shorn of her long meandering country days, sleeping in a smart brass bedstead instead of her old and rather pompous four-poster, wearing unaccustomed clothes and performing unaccustomed duties, she seemed to herself to have become a different person. Or rather, she had become two persons, each different. One was Aunt Lolly, a middle-aging lady, light-footed upon stairs, and indispensable for Christmas Eve and birthday preparations. The other was Miss Willowes, “my sister-in-law Miss Willowes,” whom Caroline would introduce, and abandon to a feeling of being neither light-footed nor indispensable. But Laura was put away. When Henry asked her to witness some document for him her Laura Erminia Willowes seemed as much a thing out of common speech as the Spinster that followed it. She would look, and be surprised that such a dignified name should belong to her.

  Twice a year, in spring and in summer, the Willowes family went into the country for a holiday. For the first three years of Laura’s London life they went as a matter of course to Lady Place. There once more arose the problem of how two children of one sex can play nicely with a much younger child of the other. Fancy and Marion played at tea-parties under the weeping ash, and Titus was the butler with a tin tray. Titus would presently run off and play by himself at soldiers, beating martial tattoos upon the tray. But now there was no danger of the youngest member of the party falling into the pond, for Aunt Lolly was always on guard.

  Laura enjoyed the visits to Lady Place, but her enjoyment did not go very deep. The knowledge that she now was a visitor where she had formerly been at home seemed to place a clear sheet of glass between her and her surroundings. She felt none of the grudge of the dispossessed; she scarcely gave a thought to the old days. It was as if in the agony of leaving Lady Place after her father’s death she had said good-bye so irremediably that she could never really come there again.

  But the visits to Lady Place came to a sad end, for in 1905 James died suddenly of heart-failure. Sibyl decided that she could not go on living alone in the country. A manager was found for the brewery, Lady Place was let unfurnished upon a long lease, and Sibyl and the four-years-old heir of the Willowes name and traditions moved to a small place in Hampstead. Sibyl had proposed to sell some of the furniture, for there was a great deal more of it than she needed, and most of it was too large to fit into her new dwelling. This project was opposed by Henry, and with considerable heat. The family establishment must, he admitted, be broken up, but he would allow no part of it to be alienated. All the furniture that could not be found room for at Hampstead or at Apsley Terrace must be stored till Titus should be of an age to resume the tenure of Lady Place.

  To Laura it seemed as though some familiar murmuring brook had suddenly gone underground. There it flowed, silenced and obscured, until the moment when it should reappear and murmur again between green banks. She thought of Titus as a grown man and herself as an old woman meeting among the familiar belongings. She believed that when she was old the ghost-like feeling that distressed her would matter less. She hoped that she might not die before that day, if it were only that she would remember so well, as Titus could not, how the furniture stood in the rooms and the pictures hung on the walls.

  But by then, she said to herself, Titus would have a wife with tastes of her own. Sibyl would have liked to alter several things, but tradition had been too strong for her. It would be a very different matter in twenty years’ time. The chairs and tables and cabinets would come out blinking and forgetful from their long storage in darkness. They would have lost the individuality by which they had made certain corners so surely their own. The Lady Place she had known was over. She could remember it if she pleased; but she must not think of it.

  Meanwhile Emma’s harp trailed its strings in her bedroom. Ratafee was removed to Hampstead. Titus had insisted upon this.

  She wondered if Henry felt as she did. He had shown a great deal of Willowes spirit over the furniture, but otherwise he had not expressed himself. In person Henry, so it was said, resembled his grandfather who had made the move from Dorset to Somerset—the sacrilegious move which the home-loving of the Willowes had so soon sanctified that in the third generation she was feeling like this about Lady Place. Henry seemed to resemble his grandfather in spirit also. He could house all the family traditions in his practical mind, and for the rest talk about bricks and mortar. He concerned himself with the terms of Sibyl’s lease, the agreement with
the manager of the brewery, and the question of finding a satisfactory place to carry his family to for the holidays.

  After some experiments they settled down to a routine that with a few modifications for the sake of variety or convenience served them for the next fifteen years. In spring they went to some moderately popular health resort and stayed in a hotel, for it was found that the uncertainty of an English spring, let alone the uncertainty of a Christian Easter, made lodgings unsatisfactory at that time of year. In summer they went into lodgings, or took a furnished house in some seaside village without any attractions. They did this, not to be economical—there was no need for economy—but because they found rather plain dull holidays the most refreshing. Henry was content with a little unsophisticated golf and float-fishing. The children bathed and played on the beach and went on bicycling expeditions; and Caroline and Laura watched the children bathe and play, and replenished their stock of underclothes, and rested from the strain of London housekeeping. Sometimes Caroline did a little reading. Sometimes Sibyl and Titus stayed with them, or Titus stayed with them alone while his mother paid visits.

  Laura looked forward with pleasure to the summer holidays (the Easter holidays she never cared about, as she had a particular dislike for palms); but after the first shock of arrival and smelling the sea, the days seemed to dribble out very much like the days in London. When the end came, and she looked back from the wagonette over the past weeks, she found that after all she had done few of the things she intended to do. She would have liked to go by herself for long walks inland and find strange herbs, but she was too useful to be allowed to stray. She had once formed an indistinct project of observing limpets. But for all her observations she discovered little save that if you sit very still for a long time the limpet will begin to move sideways, and that it is almost impossible to sit very still for a long time and keep your attention fixed upon such a small object as a limpet without feeling slightly hypnotized and slightly sick. On the lowest count she seldom contrived to read all the books or to finish all the needlework which she had taken with her. And the freckles on her nose mocked her with the receptivity of her skin compared to the dullness of her senses.

  They were submerged in the usual quiet summer holidays when the war broke out. The parish magazine said: “The vicar had scarcely left East Bingham when war was declared.” The vicar was made of stouter stuff than they. He continued his holiday, but the Willoweses went back to London. Laura had never seen London in August before. It had an arrested look, as though the war were a kind of premature autumn. She was extraordinarily moved; as they drove across the river from Waterloo she wanted to cry. That same evening Fancy went upstairs and scrubbed the boxroom floor for the sake of practice. She upset the bucket, and large damp patches appeared on the ceiling of Laura’s room.

  For a month Fancy behaved like a cat whose kittens have been drowned. If her family had not been so taken up with the war they would have been alarmed at this change in her demeanor. As it was, they scarcely noticed it. When she came in very late for lunch and said: “I am going to marry Kit Bendigo on Saturday,” Henry said, “Very well, my dear. It’s your day, not mine,” and ordered champagne to be brought up. For a moment Laura thought she heard her father speaking. She knew that Henry disapproved of Kit Bendigo as a husband for Fancy: Willoweses did not mate with Bendigos. But now he was more than resigned—he was ready. And he swallowed the gnat as unswervingly as the camel, which, if Laura had wanted to be ill-natured just then, would have surprised her as being the greater feat. Willoweses do not marry at five days’ notice. But Fancy was married on Saturday, and her parents discovered that a hasty wedding can cost quite as much as a formal one. In the mood that they were in this afforded them some slight satisfaction.

  Kit Bendigo was killed in December 1916. Fancy received the news calmly; two years’ war-work and a daughter thrown in had steadied her nerves. Kit was a dear, of course, poor old Kit. But there was a war on, and people get killed in wars. If it came to that, she was working in a high-explosive shed herself. Caroline could not understand her eldest daughter. She was baffled and annoyed by the turn her own good sense inherited had taken. The married nun looked at the widowed amazon and refused battle. At least Fancy might stay in her very expensive flat and be a mother to her baby. But Fancy drew on a pair of heavy gauntlet gloves and went to France to drive motor lorries. Caroline dared not say a word.

  The war had no such excitements for Laura. Four times a week she went to a depot and did up parcels. She did them up so well that no one thought of offering her a change of work. The parcel-room was cold and encumbered, early in the war some one had decorated the walls with recruiting posters. By degrees these faded. The ruddy young man and his Spartan mother grew pale, as if with fear, and Britannia’s scarlet cloak trailing on the waters bleached to a cocoa-ish pink. Laura watched them discolor with a muffled heart. She would not allow herself the cheap symbolism they provoked. Time will bleach the scarlet from young men’s cheeks, and from Britannia’s mantle. But blood was scarlet as ever, and she believed that, however despairing her disapproval, that blood was being shed for her.

  She continued to do up parcels until the eleventh day of November 1918. Then, when she heard the noise of cheering and the sounding of hooters, she left her work and went home. The house was empty. Every one had gone out to rejoice. She went up to her room and sat down on the bed. She felt cold and sick, she trembled from head to foot as once she had done after witnessing a dog-fight. All the hooters were sounding, they seemed to domineer over the noises of rejoicing with sarcastic emphasis. She got up and walked about the room. On the mantelpiece was a photograph of Titus. “Well,” she said to it, “you’ve escaped killing, anyhow.” Her voice sounded harsh and unreal, she thought the walls of her room were shaking at the concussion, like stage walls. She lay down upon her bed, and presently fainted.

  When she came to herself again she had been discovered by Caroline and put to bed with influenza. She was grateful for this, and for the darkened room and the cool clinking tumblers. She was even grateful for the bad dreams which visited her every night and sent up her temperature. By their aid she was enabled to stay in bed for a fortnight, a thing she had not done since she came to London.

  When she went downstairs again she found Henry and Caroline talking of better days to come. The house was unaltered, yet it had a general air of refurbishment. She also, after her fortnight in bed, felt somehow refurbished, and was soon drawn into the talk of better days. There was nothing immoderate in the family display of satisfaction. Henry still found frowning matter in the Times, and Caroline did not relinquish a single economy. But the satisfaction was there, a demure Willowes-like satisfaction in the family tree that had endured the gale with an unflinching green heart. Laura saw nothing in this to quarrel with. She was rather proud of the Willowes war record; she admired the stolid decorum which had mastered four years of disintegration, and was stolid and decorous still. A lady had inquired of Henry: “What do you do in air-raids? Do you go down to the cellar or up to the roof?” “We do neither,” Henry had replied. “We stay where we are.” A thrill had passed through Laura when she heard this statement of the Willowes mind. But afterwards she questioned the validity of the thrill. Was it nothing more than the response of her emotions to other old and honorable symbols such as the trooping of the colors and the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians, symbols too old and too honorable to have called out her thoughts? She saw how admirable it was for Henry and Caroline to have stayed where they were. But she was conscious, more conscious than they were, that the younger members of the family had somehow moved into new positions. And she herself, had she not slightly strained against her moorings, fast and far sunk as they were? But now the buffeting waves withdrew, and she began to settle back into her place, and to see all around her once more the familiar undisturbed shadows of familiar things. Outwardly there was no difference between her and Henry and Caroline in their resumption of peace. But they,
she thought, had done with the war, whereas she had only shelved it, and that by an accident of consciousness.

  When the better days to come came, they proved to be modelled as closely as possible upon the days that were past. It was astonishing what little difference differences had made. When they went back to East Bingham—for owing to its military importance, East Bingham had been unsuited for holidays—there were at first a good many traces of war lying about, such as sandbags and barbed-wire entanglements. But on the following summer the sandbags had rotted and burst and the barbed-wire had been absorbed into the farmer’s fences. So, Laura thought, such warlike phenomena as Mr. Wolf-Saunders, Fancy’s second husband, and Jemima and Rosalind, Fancy’s two daughters, might well disappear off the family landscape. Mr. Wolf-Saunders recumbent on the beach was indeed much like a sandbag, and no more arresting to the eye. Jemima and Rosalind were more obtrusive. Here was a new generation to call her Aunt Lolly and find her as indispensable as did the last.

  “It is quite like old times,” said Caroline, who sat working beside her. “Isn’t it, Lolly?”

  “Except for these anachronisms,” said Laura.

  Caroline removed the seaweed which Jemima had stuffed into her work-bag. “Bless them!” she said absently. “We shall soon be back in town again.”

  PART 2

  THE WILLOWESES CAME back to London about the second week in September. For many years the children’s schooling had governed the date of their return; and when the children had grown too old for school, the habit had grown too old to be broken. There was also a further reason. The fallen leaves, so Henry and Caroline thought, made the country unhealthy after the second week in September. When Laura was younger she had sometimes tried to argue that, even allowing the unhealthiness of fallen leaves, leaves at that time of year were still green upon the trees. This was considered mere casuistry. When they walked in Kensington Gardens upon the first Sunday morning after their return, Caroline would point along the tarnishing vistas and say: “You see, Lolly, the leaves are beginning to fall. It was quite time to come home.”